CoverScout
Version 2.3
equinux AG and equinux USA, Inc.
© 2006-2007 equinux USA, Inc. All rights reserved.
Under the copyright laws, this manual may not be copied, in whole
or in part, without the written consent of equinux AG or equinux
USA, Inc. Your rights to the software are governed by the
accompanying software license agreement.
The equinux logo is a trademark of equinux AG and equinux USA,
Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information in this
manual is accurate. equinux is not responsible for printing or clerical
errors.
Manual Revision 2.3
Created using Apple Pages.
www.equinux.com
Apple, the Apple logo, iTunes, iTunes Music Store, .Mac, Mac, Mac OS,
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trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other
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U.S. and other countries.
Amazon is a registered trademark of Amazon, Inc., registered in the
U.S. and other countries.
equinux assumes no responsibility with regard to the performance
or use of these products.
2
Content
Introduction 4
..............................................................................................iTunes‘ Best Buddy 4
.................................................Import Your iTunes Library Automatically 4
............................................................................Convenient Library Browser 4
.....................................................................................Built-in Artwork Review 4
...........................................................................Seamless iTunes Integration 4
.................................................................Search Artwork All Over the Web 4
...............................................................................................Capture Your Own 4
..............................................................Assign Artwork With a Single Click 5
...............................................................Copy iTunes Covers to Your Music 5
.................................................................................................Powerful Filtering 5
Installation 6
................................................................................................Install CoverScout 6
...........................................................................................Activate CoverScout 6
Application overview 9
....................................................................................Main Window Overview 9
..................................................................................................................Drawers 10
Inspect Your Library 12
...................................................................Import the Library From iTunes 12
...............................................................................Filter the Library Browser 14
.......................................................................................Copy iTunes Artwork 15
..........................................................................................................................Edit 20
Preferences 21
....................................................................................................................Search 21
.......................................................................................................................Apply 21
.................................................................................................................Amazon 22
....................................................................................................................Library 22
Search for covers 16
.................................................................................................................Amazon 16
...................................................................................................Google Images 17
...........................................................................................Searching the Web 18
Capture and Edit Covers 19
..................................................................................................................Capture 19
3
Introduction
Welcome to CoverScout, the simple, yet powerful
way to enhance your iTunes music library with
authentic album artwork.
Built-in Artwork Review
Checking a track‘s artwork status does not require switching to
iTunes. Just select the track in CoverScout to review the cover
and other information – the integrated size slider lets you
shrink and expand the preview size at will.
iTunes‘ Best Buddy
iTunes' new Cover Flow feature is great, but have you been
able to find those hard-to-get covers like the White Album or
maybe Weird Al Yankovic's Alapalooza? The latest version of
CoverScout has you covered as the perfect complement to
iTunes 7. With the ability to easily search and find highresolution images from sources like Amazon and Google
Images, CoverScout is the ideal cover art application tool.
Import Your iTunes Library Automatically
You don‘t have to worry about exporting your iTunes library
into another format or synchronizing two applications
manually. CoverScout loads your music library every time you
start the application and makes it available as a browseable list
of albums.
Convenient Library Browser
Your Library Browser not just displays the artists and album
titles, but also incorporates a status indicator. You‘ll see at a
glance if your music has covers, and where they are stored.
Seamless iTunes Integration
When you‘re done with applying your covers, hop over to
iTunes to listen to your favorite songs. CoverScout provides
contextual menu items to let the music play or to view your
music files in the Finder.
Search Artwork All Over the Web
CoverScout supports various Amazon websites and the
resources available via the Google image search. To search for
rare covers, you can even use the web itself and browse any
website for album artwork.
Capture Your Own
Your cover just cannot be found on the web, but it‘s lying right
next to you? CoverScout lets you apply it to your iTunes library
directly, using any QuickTime™ compatible camera. You can
even crop, rotate, and scale the captured image to achieve the
best results!
4
Assign Artwork With a Single Click
Once CoverScout has found some artwork, copying it to your
tracks is a matter of seconds. Double-Click or drag&drop the
desired cover and your music will be visually enriched.
Copy iTunes Covers to Your Music
iTunes 7 fetches covers from the iTunes Store for you, but
stores them in an external folder. To keep your artwork
portable and accessible on most platforms, CoverScout lets
you copy these covers right into your music tracks.
Powerful Filtering
Filter your library by artist name or album title - just like in
iTunes. CoverScout adds filters for album type and cover status
to let you locate missing covers and compilations at ease.
5
Installation
This section will assist with the installation of
both CD and download versions of CoverScout.
Install CoverScout
Before you can start your quest for covers, CoverScout must be
installed on your hard drive.
‣
Double click the CoverScout CD icon that appears on your
desktop.
‣
Drag the file "CoverScout" to your applications folder.
If you downloaded CoverScout from equinux.com:
‣
Double click the downloaded dmg file.
‣
Drag the file "CoverScout" to your applications folder.
Activate CoverScout
Activating CoverScout is a simple and straightforward process.
Described below are three different scenarios: Buy a new
license online, activate a retail version and transfer a license.
Note Your equinux ID will be used to store and manage all
your licenses. Whenever you purchase additional
licenses or other products, please specify your
equinux ID.
How to Install CoverScout
If you bought the retail version of CoverScout:
‣
Insert the CoverScout CD into your computer
6
Buy a License
Obtaining a license for CoverScout and activating it on your
Mac is a simple process.
To buy a license, please complete the following steps:
‣
Choose “CoverScout“ > “Buy CoverScout...“
‣
Click “Buy CoverScout“
‣
If you are a new customer, choose your country and click
“Next“.
or
‣
If you already registered with equinux, login with your
equinux ID
‣
Choose the desired license
‣
Click “Check Out“
‣
Continue shopping for other equinux products
or
‣
Click “Continue Check Out“
‣
If you are a new customer, create a new equinux ID
‣
Select either “Bank Transfer“"or “Credit Card“ as your
preferred payment option
‣
Enter your credit card data, if necessary
‣
Review your order and click “Complete Order“
If you paid by credit card, CoverScout will automatically be
activated as soon as the order process is completed. Your
license will be stored on your Mac.
Otherwise, we will send you an “Activation Code“ as soon as we
receive your payment. Please refer to the section below for
instructions on how to use the “Activation Code“.
Activate a Retail Version
If you bought a retail version of CoverScout at your local
software store or paid a license via bank transfer, you received
an “Activation Code“. This code can be used to create a license.
To activate a retail version, please complete the following
steps:
‣
Choose “CoverScout“ > “Buy CoverScout...“
‣
Click “Activate CoverScout“
‣
Register a new equinux ID (if this is your first equinux
product)
or
‣
Login with your equinux ID
‣
Enter your Activation Code
Your license will be created and stored on your Mac
automatically.
Transfer a License
All licenses for equinux products are hardware bound. When
registering our software on your computer, the license is
created for this machine. This means that a license can only be
used on a single computer.
However, transferring a license to a different computer is easy.
7
To transfer a license, please complete the following steps:
‣
On your old Mac, choose “CoverScout“ > “Deactivate
CoverScout“
The license will now be available for activating the software on
your new Mac.
‣
Install CoverScout on your new Mac
‣
On your new Mac, choose “CoverScout“ > “Activate
CoverScout“
CoverScout will automatically fetch the free license.
Note From now on, the software cannot be used on the
old machine. To transfer the license again, just repeat
the process described above.
8
Application overview
Progress Drawer Toolbar Library Browser
Clipboard Artwork Inspector
CoverScout is a great application for a variety of
scenarios. The following will describe the
application‘s user interface in details.
Main Window Overview
CoverScout's main window is centered around the library
browser which displays your iTunes library.
Library Browser
The library browser is divided into two panels:
‣
The left panel lists all albums in your iTunes library
‣
The right panel lists all tracks of the currently selected album
Context menus are available to start searches, play songs in
iTunes, show original files in the Finder or to remove covers.
To invoke a context menu:
‣
Hold the Control key while clicking a track or an album
or
‣
Right-click a track or an album
Toolbar
The toolbar is located at the top of the main window. It
provides quick access to search sources and assignment
functions. The search field can be used to execute individual
searches not based on your library data.
9
Artwork Inspector
The artwork inspector located at the bottom of the main
window displays the current artwork for the track(s) selected
above or lists artwork resulting from a search.
Two different views are available. The multi-track view is used
for search results or if more than one track (or a single album)
is selected in the library browser. The single-track view displays
a larger preview for a single track.
Library Summary
Below the artwork inspector, CoverScout displays a summary
of your library:
✦
Total number of albums
✦
Number of albums with complete covers
Drawers
There are two drawers left of and below the main window.
To open or close a drawer, please complete the following
step:
‣
Click the appropriate drawer button at the bottom of the
main window (to the left and the right of the library
summary).
Progress Drawer
The progress drawer displays the progress of active searches
and provides a history of all searches so far. Searches with pre-
selected covers appear in light blue while the currently
selected search is shown in blue.
The lower part of the progress bar can be expanded to display
the active assignments. The assignment list is hidden by
default.
To display the assignment list:
‣
Click and drag the little dot at the bottom of the progress
drawer
10
Note The assignment list displays a “queue“, i.e. it is empty
unless there are assignments in progress.
Clipboard
Once you stored covers in your clipboard, you‘ll probably want
to assign them to your tracks.
To apply covers from the clipboard:
‣
Drag and drop a cover onto an album or track
Covers can be stored temporarily in a clipboard for later use.
To store search results or existing covers in the clipboard:
‣
Select a cover from the artwork inspector
‣
Drag and drop the cover onto the clipboard
To remove covers from the clipboard:
‣
Drag and drop a cover onto the trashcan
Note The clipboard will be emptied when the application
is quit.
11
Inspect Your Library
Before you start searching and applying covers,
you‘ll probably want to inspect your iTunes
library.
Import the Library From iTunes
Each time you start up CoverScout, it automatically reads the
library and displays a list of available albums.
Note If iTunes is not running, CoverScout will start iTunes.
Cover Status and Album Type
For each album, the current cover status is displayed in two
columns.
✦
A white square signals that none of the album's tracks is
covered (Status: missing)
✦
A grey square means that some of the tracks are covered
(Status: incomplete)
✦
A green square shows that all tracks are covered (Status:
complete)
✦
A question mark signals that the cover status is unknown
to CoverScout
Note For single tracks, there are only three states (missing,
covered/complete and unknown).
iTunes 7 is now capable of fetching album covers from the
iTunes Store, but it stores the artwork externally (instead of the
music files themselves). The second status column in
CoverScout displays the storage location of your covers:
✦
A green check mark shows that all covers are stored in
your music files (as ID3 tags)
✦
A gre y tr i angl e si g nals th at t he cov e rs are sto red
externally by iTunes (as so-called “iTunes covers“)
The left column shows the general cover status:
12
Note For albums, the grey triangle appears if either all or
some of the individual tracks‘ covers are iTunes
covers.
The third column defines the album type:
‣
Compilations are marked with four circles in a third
column
Manual Reload
There are two reasons why you would need to do a manual
reload of your iTunes library:
✦
If you added or changed some files while CoverScout is
running
✦
If there are many albums with an unknown cover status.
The unknown cover status emerges if iTunes 7 is used to
modify music files, because the new iTunes version does not
include cover information in the library file anymore.
To reload the iTunes library manually:
‣
Choose “Cover“ > “Reload iTunes Library“
or
‣
Hit ALT-CMD-R
or
‣
Click the “Reload“ button in the toolbar
CoverScout will then reload the iTunes library, recognize new
songs and determine the cover status for songs/albums with
an unknown cover status.
13
Filter the Library Browser
You can filter your library using various criteria, among them
cover status, album title, or type.
To filter for cover status:
‣
Choose one of the options from the status filter drop-down,
located at the top of the library browser
In other words: By choosing this filter, you‘ll see all covers
which need maintenance.
We recommend to use this filter when completing your library
– once there are no albums displayed here, your library is
complete.
The other filters are just subsets of the second filter –"albums
which have an unknown status, missing or incomplete covers,
or iTunes covers. These filters can be used for statistical
purposes.
To filter for album type:
‣
Choose one of the options from the album type filter dropdown, located at the top of the library browser
“Albums with complete ID3 covers“ are just fine - this filter
displays albums which do not require any maintenance.
“Albums with incomplete ID3 covers“ displays all albums for
which at least one track has
✦
no cover
✦
an unknown cover status or
✦
a iTunes proprietary iTunes cover
14
To filter for artist, album or track:
‣
Select the filter field at the top right of the library browser
‣
Enter your search string
Copy iTunes Artwork
As mentioned above, iTunes 7 stores covers externally on your
harddrive. To keep your artwork accessible on alternative
platforms, these covers need to be present within your music
files (as ID3 tags). CoverScout lets you copy all iTunes artwork
into your music files with a single click.
To copy iTunes artwork into your music files:
‣
Click “Copy“ in the toolbar
or
‣
Select “Cover“ > “Copy iTunes Artwork“
15
Source and
number of results
Size slider
Search for covers
Finding artwork for your songs and albums is
very simple. This section covers the methods for
locating that perfect image for your album.
Amazon
Cover searches at Amazon are seamlessly integrated into
CoverScout. Searching these two sources is quite simple.
To search covers at Amazon:
‣
Select the albums and tracks you would like to search in the
library browser
or
‣
Enter a combination of artist and album name in the search
field of the toolbar
‣
Click “Amazon“ in the toolbar
CoverScout will start searching and display all active and
completed searches in the progress drawer (s. “Application
overview“"above for a screenshot of the drawer).
The artwork inspector displays all results for the selected
search, including the number of results and the source used for
searching (see below). A convenient size slider allows you to
preview the covers in various sizes.
To change the preview size in the artwork inspector:
‣
Click and drag the slider knob to the right to enlarge the
cover
or
‣
Click and drag the know to the left to minimize the cover
Depending on the number of searches, you can now pre-select
covers and apply them in bulk or apply them manually one by
one.
To select and apply covers in bulk:
‣
Select a single search by clicking its entry in the progress
drawer
‣
Single-click a cover in the artwork inspector to pre-select it
‣
Repeat the last two steps for every search in the progress
drawer
16
‣
Click the “Apply“ button in the toolbar once to make
CoverScout apply the selected covers to the appropriate
tracks
To apply covers one by one:
‣
Select a single search from the progress drawer
‣
Double-click one of the results to apply it
or
‣
Drag and drop it on the desired albums or tracks
To search covers with Google Images:
‣
Select the albums and tracks you would like to search in the
library browser
or
‣
Enter a combination of artist and album name in the search
field of the toolbar
‣
Click “Google“ in the toolbar
Applying covers might take a while, depending on the number
of searches and your system‘s performance. All current
processes are displayed in the assignment list at the bottom of
the progress drawer (s. “Application overview“"above for a
screenshot).
Note Please do not start new searches while CoverScout is
busy applying covers.
Google Images
Searching Google is actually quite different from searching
Amazon. Searches will be performed in an integrated browser
window (instead of the artwork inspector), and you can even
browse the web to search for covers manually.
17
The integrated browser window will open.
Note In the Google Preferences, the option “Open search
results in a new browser window“ must be
deactivated. Otherwise, any click on a search result
will open a window in an external browser.
‣
Click one of the preview covers to access a full size version
‣
Click “See full-size image“
‣
Right-click (or CTRL-click) the image to invoke the context
menu “Apply cover“
‣
Choose the menu option to apply the cover
Searching the Web
Instead of searching Google Images, you can also use the
integrated web browser to fetch artwork from any website.
To search the web manually:
‣
Click “Google“ in the toolbar to open the browser window
‣
Enter the desired URL in the address bar
‣
Locate your preferred artwork
‣
Right-click (or CTRL-click) the image to invoke the context
menu “Apply cover“
‣
Choose the menu option to apply the cover
18
Capture and Edit Covers
Instead of searching artwork at Amazon or on the
Web, you can simply capture the covers you
already own, using CoverScout and a compatible
camera. If you‘re not happy with an image or
you‘d like to improve existing covers – the builtin cover editor is there for you
Capture
If a QuickTime™ compatible camera (like Apple‘s iSight) is
connected to your Mac, you can capture any image and apply
it to your albums.
To capture a cover:
‣
Select an album or a track in the library browser
‣
Click the “Edit“ button in the toolbar
or
‣
Click the camera symbol
The dialog will change to display what is currently visible for
your camera.
‣
Select “Cover > Edit Cover...“
or
‣
Right-click an album, a track or a cover displayed in the
artwork inspector and choose “Edit Cover...“
A dialog will open, displaying the current cover (if available). At
the lower left of this dialog, a green camera symbol should be
visible.
19
‣
Click the “Capture“ button next to the camera symbol to
capture an image
‣
Change crop size, scale and rotation as desired (s. below for
details)
‣
Click “Apply“ to apply the image to your album
Edit
The built-in cover editor can be used to crop, scale, or rotate
existing covers or captured images.
To edit a cover:
‣
Select an album or a track in the library browser
‣
Click the “Edit“ button in the toolbar
or
‣
Select “Cover > Edit Cover...“
or
‣
Right-click an album, a track or a cover displayed in the
artwork inspector and choose “Edit Cover...“
‣
Use the crop size menu at the top to define the final cover
size (e.g. 300x300 pixels)
A dialog will open, displaying the current cover.
‣
Use the slider to the left to rotate the picture (up to 30
degrees in each direction)
or
‣
Use the scale slider to increase or decrease the cover size
or
20
Preferences
CoverScout's preferences are organized in five tabs.
Search
The Search tab allows you to set various search-related
parameters.
To select the search method:
‣
Choose “Search by Artist Name“
To search for compilation tracks separately:
‣
Check the appropriate box
The last setting can be used to define a default search source
which is used when double-clicking a track or an album.
To set the default search source:
‣
Choose one of the two options (Amazon or Google Images)
Apply
The Apply tab provides options for automatic application of
covers to tracks. This is useful for applying artwork in bulk.
or
‣
Choose “Search by Artist Name and Album Title“
For compilations, you can make CoverScout search for each
individual track (in order to find the original albums' artwork)
instead of searching for the album name.
21
To enable automatic assignment:
‣
Check the appropriate box
‣
Choose one of the three modes
Note If you allow CoverScout to apply covers
automatically, make sure to check the result
afterwards.
Amazon
The Amazon tab lets you choose between various national
stores.
To choose one of the national stores:
‣
Choose an entry from the list
To exclude Podcasts or Videos from the library browser:
‣
Check the appropriate box in the Library tab
Library
In the Library tab, you can decide which elements from your
iTunes library should be ignored while it is loaded into
CoverScout.
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